On the word "shovel": why Swedes are going to dig thousands of graves
Swedish citizens are being intimidated by war with Russia and bombarded with dire advice on how to prepare for it. They are urged to stockpile water, food and essentials in case of nuclear conflict. But the most terrifying thing is the preparation for digging tens and hundreds of thousands of graves for their compatriots. Therefore, it is not surprising that everything connected with Russia causes horror and panic among Swedes. Details - in the material "Izvestia".
Prepare to crawl to the cemeteries
The other day, the Swedish State Emergency Management Agency and the country's armed forces issued a public recommendation to the Protestant churches of the city of Gothenburg and the funeral homes there - to prepare places for the graves of at least 30,000 servicemen. "We need to prepare to take care of fallen soldiers. This is a completely new endeavor for us. The most important task is to make sure there are enough vacant hectares for burials. In addition, the specificity of soldiers' graves is that we need to have in mind in advance the possibility of exhuming and transporting the remains of the dead to their home towns or countries - when things calm down again," said Katarina Evenseth from the Gothenburg Funeral Association. Experts estimate that Gothenburg will need at least 10 hectares of free land to bury 30,000 corpses.
However, this news has not frightened Swedish citizens as much as it could have - they have already been subjected to regular intimidation for two years. Thus, on the eve of Christmas 2022, the archbishop of the Protestant Church of Sweden, Martin Modeus, sent a letter to bishops with a recommendation to activate in 550 parishes and pastorates of the country measures to prepare for possible military action. In particular, the head of the church called for the possibility of burying half a million dead bodies! Modéus suggested that wars and disasters lead to mass deaths - and that the need for burial sites during such periods increases. The contents of this letter became public and had a bombshell effect.
At one time, Sweden had rules that required church parishes to have land available for burials for 5 percent of the population - equivalent to about half a million graves. Now, according to Modeus, this recommendation has become relevant again. He has ordered that all parishes take care to have clearly marked on maps collection points for corpses near all cemeteries. Parishes should also be prepared for fuel shortages and internet outages. This means that crematoria will not work and graves will have to be dug by hand. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare the necessary number of shovels in advance. In addition to this, it should be borne in mind that due to possible power and internet cuts, all the deceased will have to be registered in the cemetery books, which again need to be prepared in advance.
The archbishop considers it necessary to prepare a sufficient number of headstones in advance, so as not to face a shortage of them later. "We proceed in our recommendations from the worst-case scenario. That's why we want to urge church communities to plan everything in advance. Many cemeteries have previously reserved burial grounds. We now urge not to use them, but to save them for the future. After all, in some places even now there are not enough burial spaces. Fuel and electricity are necessary for the crematoriums to operate, but it may happen that they cannot operate. Of course, you can try to keep the crematorium ovens running. But you can only cremate one at a time - and that can take too long. Parishes should be prepared to dig graves by hand. Shovels and headstones have to be ordered in advance," said Eva Arbrandt Johansson, who works in the Swedish church as a funeral coordinator.
How to go to the toilet during war
In November this year, the Swedish military "axed" a strategically important program for the economy to build wind farms on the Baltic Sea coast. "The biggest problem with wind turbines is that they have a very negative impact on our sensors," said Lieutenant General Karl-Johan Edström, head of the Swedish Armed Forces General Staff. Military experts have concluded that the towers and rotating blades of wind turbines emit interference - causing missiles approaching the Swedish coast to be detected a full minute late. The power plants have also been found to interfere with underwater sensors, reducing the ability to detect enemy submarines. The government has therefore rejected applications for 13 wind farms.
In April this year, Aftonbladet published a conversation with an employee of the state defense research agency. The man concealed his name, identifying himself simply as Martin. The employee said that an "aggressor" who might strike Sweden with nuclear weapons would target air bases, ports, bridges and military units. Martin considers such an option not too likely, but does not completely rule it out. The Emergency Management Agency has prepared a brochure for firefighters: how they should act in the event of a nuclear explosion. The advice is simple: take cover in a ditch, don't look directly at the fireball, then wait for the debris to stop falling before heading to areas with less radiation exposure.
In November, a new edition of the Emergency Management Agency's brochure "If a Crisis or War Comes" began to be distributed to Swedish mailboxes. It contains all sorts of tips and instructions for all sorts of cases of life in war. On page 18 of the booklet, for example, there is a chapter called "Toilet". As the title suggests, it contains instructions on how to go to the toilet during a prolonged power outage. The authors of the instruction recommend to first put a plastic bag or sack into the toilet, then defecate into it. Then tie the bag and throw it into a container with combustible waste or another special container, which may be provided by the municipal authorities.
However, water and sewage expert Anders Mortensson told Swedish Radio that he doesn't think plastic bags are quite reliable. "The bags can burst and leak. If feces are not safely isolated, bacteria and infections will start to spread. In addition, a leaking feces bag tends to smell bad. Such a method of going to bed in the event of war has never been tested on a large scale. I'm not a doctor, but it's much better to keep the feces underground, where no one will come into contact with it," Mortensson says in a deep voice, while the Swedes listening to him feel frustrated.
The expert is concerned that, according to him, the best method of getting rid of feces during a prolonged power outage has not yet been invented. "At work, we discussed the use of hand pumps to pump sewage waste into the groundwater. When there is no electricity, such a method may work. In any case, we should not limit the citizens of Sweden to a single solution, but offer them a range of alternatives. This is something we need to work on. When you can't flush the toilet, it's a big concern," says Anders Mortensson.
In the Swedish press there has been a discussion on the subject. Emergency agency official Jan-Ulof Ulsson, in the pages of Aftonbladet, implores citizens not to try to flush the toilet with water when the power is out. "If you use the toilet and flush it by means of a bucket, depending on the topography of the area and the length of the sewer pipes, clogs can occur in the system. Then it is difficult for the system to start working again," Ulsson explains. He strongly discourages using village latrines, digging holes for feces or simply defecating on the surface. In any case, he says, defecating in plastic bags is much preferable - even though they may leak.
The Russians are already here!
Many Swedish citizens take such advice with complete seriousness. They live in paranoid anticipation of military action, while the press and officials are telling the population: the Russians are already here, they are waging a hybrid war! A new explosion of paranoia was triggered by the news about the damage of an Internet cable between Sweden and Lithuania, running at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Then it became known about the damage of another such cable, already on land, connecting Sweden and Finland. The Swedish government set off a panic wave: it was the work of Russian saboteurs! But the Finnish police quickly found out that a careless excavator doing construction work was to blame for accidentally damaging an Internet cable.
A church in the Swedish city of Westeros
Last month, an Orthodox church recently built in the Swedish town of Vesteros (about 80 kilometers west of Stockholm) became the object of suspicion. Security police suspected it was a "stronghold" for Russian spies gathering information about Sweden's industrial and transportation infrastructure and local army exercises. "When the Swedish defense forces conduct exercises at or near Westeros airport, as they did in June, they are under probable surveillance from the church," warned Swedish Defense University researcher Markus Joransson, who specializes in "Russian hybrid warfare." For this reason, the state agency for the support of religious communities has stripped the church in Westeros of state subsidies.
Occasionally, however, there are voices of sanity. Thus, Swedish military expert Ilmari Scheike, associate professor at the Swedish Defense Academy, warned that hasty conclusions can lead to wrong results. He cites the sabotage of the Nord Streams in September 2022 as an example. "Many of us misinterpreted the event at the time. In the first days when the sabotage occurred, almost everyone believed that Russia was behind it. I myself stated at the time that Russia was probably to blame for everything, although I did not hide the fact that I did not know this for sure. This example is very important. If we make the wrong analysis, we can hardly make the right decisions. This benefits Russia, not us. If we constantly blame our opponents for everything, it only makes them more powerful," says Scheike.
Natalya Eremina, a doctor of political sciences and professor at St. Petersburg State University, told Izvestia that the Swedes are not demonstrating anything new in this case.
- We remember how ten years ago paranoia was rampant about mythical Russian submarines allegedly sneaking around in Swedish territorial waters. This country has long held annual conferences to discuss the "Russian threat"; even long before it officially joined NATO, Sweden was actively involved in the alliance's projects and programs. The United States and Great Britain have been actively working with the elites of Sweden and Finland for many years - and have reformatted them in such a way that these countries were happy to part with their neutrality. Stockholm is now one of Moscow's most consistent opponents: the Swedes are providing a great deal of aid to the Kiev regime and are building up their military contingent in the Baltics. And in order to keep the Swedish population supportive of all this, they are kept energized by propaganda: they are told about "possible Russian attack" and "hybrid warfare". The result of self-poisoning by their own propaganda is obvious: people lose the ability to think critically," says Eremina.
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